February 25, 2010

February 03, 2010

Suppose that everything red on Earth is green on Twin Earth, and that everything green on Earth is red on Twin Earth. What sort of vegetation is found on Twin Earth? If Twin Earthers call red things green and green things red, will they say that red is a mixture of blue and yellow, and purple is a mixture of blue and green? How has astronomy, for instance, developed on Twin Earth?

Taylor's voluteer subject (the mathematician Seymour Papert) wore his goggles every morning, and took them off every afternoon. Papert went through a tortuous training program during his goggle periods, supervised by a Mrs. Schermann. She issued instructions such as "Take the book on the right with your left hand and place it on the right-hand chair, at the same time putting your left foot on the left chair." Failure in some of these exercises allegedly met with sharp taps on the hand and blows with a walking stick [!]. […] Taylor goes on to report the final result of the experiment:

As predicted, adaptation was not blocked by the daily periods of normal vision. On the contrary, it was more rapid than it had been in the two previous experiments …, and this can doubtless be attributed to the systematic training. … Also there was no disruption of behavior when the spectacles were put on or taken off. And finally, the prediction that the right-left ordering of the perceptual field would remain unchanged when the spectacles were put on or removed was confirmed. This was strikingly illustrated when the subject rode a bicycle while wearing the spectacles, and took them off and replaced them without changing course or wobbling or showing any other signs of disruption. Objects that he perceived as being on his left while wearing the spectacles were still on his left when he took them off.

I submit that this is basically a superpower, albeit it not a very practical one.